25 June 2011

"Mo Li Hua" (ou "if you go to Beijing be sure to wear some jasmine in your hair")

"Since Tunisian revolutionaries this year anointed their successful revolt against the country’s dictatorial president the 'Jasmine Revolution', this flowering cousin of the olive tree has been branded a nefarious change-agent by the skittish men who keep the Chinese Communist Party in power.

Beginning in February, when anonymous calls for a Chinese 'Jasmine Revolution' began circulating on the Internet, the Chinese characters for jasmine have been intermittently blocked in text messages while videos of President Hu Jintao singing 'Mo Li Hua', a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, have been plucked from the Web. Local officials, fearful of the flower’s destabilizing potency, canceled this summer’s China International Jasmine Cultural Festival, said Wu Guangyan, manager of the Guangxi Jasmine Development and Investment Company". (aqui)

"Technically, this is not a pressing concern for me, since I live far, far in the depths of the Scottish Highlands, in a very small village which boasts exactly one drinking establishment (staffed by our closest neighbour). With the odds of street attacks by anything other than an angry ground-nesting bird rather low, I imagine organising a Slutwalk in the West Highlands would be met with puzzlement and not a little confusion. (...) In principle, I support the notion of the Slutwalks. (...) Why is this worth bringing up? Simply because, with Slutswalks springing up here, there, and not-quite-everywhere in the UK, it seems a crucial founding message has been lost. That women should not be regarded as targets even if sex is their work.

Unfortunately, the version of Slutwalking that has come here seems only selectively interested in the original message... since most of the organisers, and most vocal participants in Slutwalks, are exactly the same people who turned up en masse outside London's new Playboy club to jeer women at work. (...) While gender solidarity in the face of differing opinion is no doubt a worthy concept, I found I was losing untold time and energy trying to explain to other women why I, too, should be regarded not only as an authentic woman with an authentic sexual self, but as a human being, full stop. There are feminists who dehumanise sex workers in a way that is sickening to read, and they are increasingly quoted by and respected in the mainstream. Sorry, ladies - ya lost me when you equated renting access to sexual favours with not having a brain, a free will, or an ability to discern real allies from real haters".

"Not keen on wading through the 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's recently-released emails? Help is at hand in the form of Michael Solomon, who has turned them into poetry.

Well, not all of them, obviously, but after some assiduous 'literary sleuthing' through the email trove, the executive editor of Byliner and former features director of The Daily Beast has 'discovered... language that was clearly intended to be poetry [and] the result is 50 previously unpublished poems by Alaska's comedic bard'. He's just published I Hope Like Heck: The Selected Poems of Sarah Palin".

One of Lyda's aides stopped me in the hall
To say the building was getting a kick
Out of my 'burnt toast' episode this morning
That caused the fire alarms to go off
For 20 minutes
And caused an evacuation.
She thought it was funny
I was cooking breakfast in the capitol
And burnt it.
I assured her
I was not in the building this morning,
I was not cooking breakfast here at any time,
And I did not burn any toast.
She looked at me warily,
I doubt she believed me.
(aqui)

"For two short weeks, the streets of New York City were transformed into a stage. The performers were anyone who ever dreamed of playing a musical instrument. Last year was the debut of the the pop-up pianos, and they're about to return. Artists are busy putting the final touches on 28 grands and 60 uprights, a total of 88 pianos all with unique personalities". (aqui)

19 June 2011

"And now we arrive at what is unquestionably Clarence Clemons' finest hour, his epic, extended saxophone solo from 'Jungleland'. It's useless to try describing this one; suffice to say, it showcases, in two minutes, all of the Big Man's greatest talents, particularly his passion. The solo comes at a point in the song when words are no longer of any use - Springsteen has set the stage, described the scene, put the players in position, and Clarence takes care of the rest. When the lyrics resume for the final few minutes, the story has skipped ahead; Springsteen doesn't need to sing about the connecting material, because Clarence and his Sax told the story through pure, raw emotion. 'Jungleland' is a masterpiece, and it wouldn't be nearly as good without Clarence's legendary solo - hell, since 'Jungleland' is the last track on the album, the solo is really the climax of Born to Run itself, the apex of Springsteen's most iconic work. If that doesn't speak to Clemons' importance in the E-Street Band, then nothing will". (aqui)